


I See Colours In Your Love

by GideonGraystairs



Series: Tumblr Fics [5]
Category: Shadowhunters (TV), The Mortal Instruments Series - Cassandra Clare, The Shadowhunter Chronicles - Cassandra Clare
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Alternate Universe- No Supernatural, Artist Alec, Comforting Magnus Bane, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Painting, Past Character Death, Post-Loss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-18
Updated: 2017-05-18
Packaged: 2018-11-02 03:12:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 708
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10935774
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GideonGraystairs/pseuds/GideonGraystairs
Summary: “You always say that, Alec,” the older man tries, tossing his book aside and setting his reading glasses carefully on top before making his way towards the artist. “And it’s always perfect.”





	I See Colours In Your Love

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on [Tumblr](http://raphaelsantiago.co.vu) 07/04/2015.
> 
> Requested by baneandalec as a line of dialogue prompt: "This doesn't feel right." Malec

“Something’s wrong,” Alec announces, stepping back from the piece with a contemplative expression furrowed across his face. Magnus looks up from his perch on the couch at the other side of the room, book in hand sliding down the headrest he’d had it resting on. He squints, trying to figure out what his boyfriend is referring to.

“Looks fine to me,” Magnus deduces quickly, nodding his head and turning back to _The Great Gatsby_. Alec scowls at him in return, releasing a frustrated sound as he dunks his brush in the water and turns back to the painting. Water drips from the fine strands to the tarp coating their hardwood floors, a testament to his abandonment of effort that he doesn't move to dry off the excess liquid.

Instead, Alec frowns at the image developing on the canvas, dipping his paintbrush into the black and hovering it just above the drying paint like he doesn’t know where he wants to start. He stares, seconds stretching into moments into minutes until the paint on his brush is too dry to do him any good and he’s stuck tossing it onto the table with an irritated groan. Stepping back, he takes another long look at the piece.

“It just-” he starts slowly, frustrated. “It just doesn’t feel right, you know?”

From across the room, his boyfriend lets out a groan of his own. “You always say that, Alec,” the older man tries, tossing his book aside and setting his reading glasses carefully on top before making his way towards the artist. “And it’s always perfect.”

Alec sighs, leaning back into the circle of Magnus’s arms as they loop around his waist. “I know,” he mutters weakly, letting out a heavy breath to take the weight off his heart and expel it into the air. “I just want it to be… I want it to mean what it’s supposed to, if that makes any sense.”

His boyfriend hums in response, contemplating the piece before him with careful perceptiveness. A violet sunset stretching through a dark balcony railing, tattered white curtains fluttering against an invisible wind. Reds and blues and orange and grey all swirling together in perfectly imperfect harmony, heavy across the canvas in a way that sinks deep into the viewer’s chest.

Magnus lets out a quiet breath, like he’s just watched someone get stabbed in the gut and isn’t sure how to make the bleeding stop. Slowly, softly, “Is it about Max?”

Alec laughs, a sort of choked sound the older of the two has come to associate with sardonic surprise. “It’s about all of us,” he says once the laughter stops. “You know, _after_.”

And Magnus doesn’t know, not really, because maybe it was _after_ for Alec but it was _before_ for him, before he met the beautiful boy he’s come to love so much. So he doesn’t know that the red is Jace’s rage at the world and the violet is Isabelle’s desperate need to understand the incomprehensible. He doesn’t know the grey is Maryse’s quiet grief, her inability to emote after the sudden loss of one of her children. He doesn’t know the blue is Alec, steady and safe and reliable for all of them while he crashed like the ocean against the rocks behind closed doors.

He doesn’t know any of that, but he can see Max’s smile in the white of the curtains, the one from the picture Alec still keeps at their bedside, and he can see Alec’s love in the black of the railings, the holes of those curtains.

He doesn’t know the _before_ or the _after_ , but he does know **Alec**. And just like anything he does, Magnus can’t find a single thing wrong with it.

He smiles, leaning forward to peck his boyfriend’s cheek. “It’s perfect,” he whispers softly, like if he says it convincingly enough it won’t hurt so much.

Alec smiles back, a twitch of his lips that briefly flickers like the sky through his eyes. He doesn’t have to say anything, Magnus knows he isn’t going to try to find anymore flaws with the piece.

Maybe it just doesn’t feel right because Alec hates to relive the past almost as much as he loves to paint it.


End file.
